


Crawling in the Dark

by skyGaia



Category: House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski
Genre: Atmospheric, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Horror, Surreal, Suspense, a lot of headcanon and, au elements, inconclusive ending, the OC tag is explaining a made-up name for a canon character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:21:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27793735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyGaia/pseuds/skyGaia
Summary: Tiggs, Verm, Smith, and their hunting trip. Inspired by the scene with the ftaires and a whole lot of headcanon.
Kudos: 1





	Crawling in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> This has actually been done for a while, only just now posting it because I finally got around to figuring out the CSS required. Spoiler alert: it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. It's just entering it all is what'll be a pain. I guess all that procrastinating was for nothing, huh? lol.
> 
> That being said: This story is meant to be enjoyed with the formatting on. Please do so.
> 
> I admittedly originally envisioned this as a crossover with something quite different, as a sort of spiritual successor to another work I posted. It would have been a lot more OC-centric, although Tiggs, Verm, and the journal author (who I named Smith) are such a footnote in the original book they may as well be OCs here.
> 
> So, without further rambling, here’s a one-shot based on the scene with the ftaires in House of Leaves. A whole lot of headcanon and maybe AU elements, because it’s been a while since I sat down and gave a proper read-through of the book. I haven’t really been in the right mindset for it, but with this quarantine, who knows? Maybe I’ll reread it and see if this holds up to canon. :)

It was night in the forest.

Everywhere was dark, dark, dark. There was no light to see with, not even from the moon, although Tiggs could see it high above and through the trees. It was like a white hole in the inky black sky, perfectly round and contrasting starkly with everything else.

The branches of the trees reached upwards towards it, twisted and gnarled, their split ends and protrusions like a mass of writhing rat tails. The outline of those branches could only be seen due to the vague hint of blue in the sky above, or perhaps the grey wisp of a cloud passing by overhead. Otherwise, it would have been impossible to tell they were there from the sheer darkness alone.

Tiggs shivered, rubbing his hands on his arms. The forest, being night, was also cold. But it was different, this time. Not even winter could compare to this freezing feeling. It was like the ice and snow that should have been on the ground had instead penetrated into Tiggs’ bones, freezing not just his skin but also his insides: muscles, organs, blood, and all. It was the kind of cold nobody could ever hope to escape.

A low growl of something echoed nearby, and Tiggs came to another realization.

Namely, that he was not alone.

…but of course he wasn’t. He had been out searching for game with Verm and Smith. They hadn’t had any luck yet, but he knew with time they’d find something of value. He held out hope for that, no matter how the ice seeped into his skin and the wind bit his sides. So, perhaps the reason he was out here alone was because he was still doing a bit of searching, despite the dark. Actually, perhaps _to_ spite it.

He was lost now, though, and it was too dark to see the way back. Tiggs looked to the moon again, the piercing, snow-white circle cut-out it was, but the moon offered no guidance or aid to his silent pleas.

That something that had made noise before growled again. It was closer, this time.

Tiggs decided that he need to just pick a direction and walk in it already. So he spun around in a circle, and began walking in the direction he landed in.

ignoring that he had ended up in the direction of the noise the first time.

Tiggs began walking. The soft crunch of the leaves underneath his feet did nothing to settle his nerves, and indeed as time passed he only got more and more nervous. The darkness felt like it was closing in, and if he strained his ears enough he swore he could hear something walking along behind him. Whenever he stopped, though, there was no noise.

Another growl. Tiggs’ pulse began to quicken.

Finally, Tiggs stopped. There was something in front of him. But that was impossible. Because the something that had been following him was supposed to have been behind him, right? So why was it now in front of him? Hesitantly, Tiggs opened his mouth slightly, perhaps hoping to call out to that something and ask what it wanted…

He recoiled.

There was a foul smell, one that tasted of sulfur and rotting meat as it hit the roof of his mouth. There was a hint of smoke and ash, too, creating a disgusting stench that suddenly permeated the air as if it had been there all along. Something huffed, a warm curl of equally sour-smelling air hitting Tiggs in the face, and Tiggs cast a glance upwards, from whence the breath came.

The minotaur stared back at him, glowing red eyes shining in the dark like two bright pits of

***

“Tiggs! Tiggs! Wake up, Tiggs!”

Tiggs groaned and opened his eyes, rubbing the sleep from them as he sat up in his bedroll. Smith was standing above him, breath puffing in the cold winter air, dressed in his fur cap and other warm clothes he had taken with him on this hunt. His rifle was in his hands, and the man screwed up his face as he frowned down at him.

“Don’t tell me you’re having dreams too,” Smith said, and Tiggs sent a quizzical look Smith’s way. Smith scoffed. “Verm was describing some horrid dream he had last night. Something about demons chasing him into an endless maze. I say the man’s had a bit too much of that drink in his canteen.”

Tiggs laughed. “Well, he needs somethin’ to keep himself warm now, doesn’t he?” he joked, and Smith laughed as well, before nodding.

“Right then. Well, come on, get up. We need to find a better shelter than this blasted place. Lord knows we’ve been stuck here for too long,” Smith said, and then stepped away. Tiggs stared after him, before gathering up his bedroll and pack and following after.

The search was no better, this time. There were no deer in the field, nor in the woods beyond. They found no rabbits, or hares, or turkeys, boars, buffalo, duck, goose, elk, sheep, squirrels, quails, partridges, bears, foxes, raccoons, coyotes, geese, muskrats, bobcats, opossums, ravens, crows, moose, beavers, why, Tiggs was so hungry he could even eat the ants crawling in the dirt if he wanted to, or the eggs of a snake or the blades of grass he was trampling beneath his feet, if he could snatch one of those damned clouds out of the sky, those that were raining snow and hail and billowing winds that cut through his clothes like knives, he’d eat those too, he was so hungry and starved.

But he was probably getting a bit ahead of himself.

The silence in this place was maddening.

The only respite from the silence was the way the winds blew in the trees beyond, a crashing and cracking that made it sound as if there was something out there, pursuing them. Strangely enough, the noise was comforting, in a way, at least compared to the silence, as there was no other noise from Verm or Smith as they, too, reveled in the howling winds and the swaying of trees.

There was no need to speak. They understood one another.

Energy was to be conserved for hunting, or finding a way out of this place.

Tiggs thought back to the dream Verm supposedly had, of the demons chasing him into a maze. Maze was right, in a way, as there seemed to be no end to the space stretching out before them, and yet they could always find themselves at the forest’s edge of they so wished. They never entered it, even if they so desperately wanted to find food, for somehow, in the small of their brain, all three of them knew there was no leaving this place.

Verm dreamed again, or maybe it was Tiggs. Bones, piles upon piles of bones, bleached white by the moon-sun’s fire, glittering and dazzling in the stark blackness of the cold, dark, endless night. The beast that killed and ate it’s prey sat atop the throne of bones, picking out meat from between its teeth. With every flick of it’s pick-like claws, it tossed a scrap to Tiggs/Verm.

Tiggs/Verm would then scramble to snatch it up, if only for the ability to have at least some small morsel of food in his/their stomach. The hunger gnawed at his/their belly like fangless snakes, threatening to swallow him/them whole with their incessant gnawing, gnawing, gnawing, gnawing, gnawing.

Tiggs starved.

Tiggs awoke.

Tiggs dreamed of blood-red snow and death with a bull’s head coming to claim them all.

Then, Smith found the stairs.

***

While Lord De La Warr arrived later and discovered the journal, and thus sentenced it to die a firey death, the House would not be so deterred.

It whispered into the minds of the residents, searching, probing, for the one selected to the task. It whispered secrets and spells and all sorts of dreadful little things into their ear, so that when the deed was passed onto them they did not ignite. Instead, they tucked the pages away, allowing for a journey of over four-hundred years and a distance of several states, although it was hardly in a straight line. 

No one really knows how far it truly went, whether from the East Coast to the West to the East and back again, or perhaps across the North and the South and right smack dab in the middle. But it ended up in Boston, was the important thing, and there was discovered, finding it’s way into a reference in an old man’s research about a record made by another man who almost assuredly exists and yet does not because he was consumed, forgotten.

The record was then to be discovered and read by an even younger man, one who let his mind slowly unspool and degenerate as the beast within the pages fed off his paranoia and fear. The Minotaur hungers, he hungers and starves just as Johnny hungered, just as Zampano hungered, just as Navidson and Holloway and the children and Delial and Verm and Tiggs hungered and starved, leaving only Smith alone and lost, to be consumed by the great beast. And those after him, left behind by their contemporaries.

(Never mind the fact that their desires are what did them in in the end.)

(Companionship. Knowledge. Safety. Food. Those things consumed them all, individually, one by one, and left them rotting in the basement wastes.)

(Bones. Bones to adorn the throne of the only one who truly feeds.)

  


And thus, all that remained was the House.

As it should be.


End file.
